Friday, January 22, 2010

Success!

Today was pretty exciting. Today was the day that we got to see if the science experiment we've been working on for almost the entire last week would yield edible results. And it worked!

Remember this?

Doesn't exactly look appetizing, I know. But that is nature hard at work, turning regular flour and water into a live culture, a form of wild yeast that is then, five days later, turned into this:

Umm... not much more appetizing, is it...?

Bear with me. Those bubbles were actually exciting to me. It meant that my culture was alive and kicking... or... fermenting... or something. It meant that the culture was active, which meant that I did something right. Woohoo! And, believe it or not, by last night, it turned into something that actually looked recognizable - like actual dough being worked into something you might consider eating... you know, at some point.

Last night it looked like this:

Kinda cool, huh?

So this dough was rolled.

And shaped.

And coated with an egg wash.

And finally baked. To become these:

Croissants!!

These were another selection from our bread book, and as you can probably guess, the main ingredient in these (other than flour...) was time. Days to cultivate and feed the culture. Hours or resting in between layers being rolled and folded. Another day before they could be shaped, and hours to let them proof before being baked. But I am pretty proud of these. I made half regular croissants and half chocolate, and they are pretty tasty. Not quite as flaky as I'd expected, but definitely delicious. And, even considering all of the time (and flour), I will definitely make these again.